The BOURNE Continuity!

Author's Note:Yes this is a Trek story. The title will be explained in the fullness of time.

THE BOURNE CONTINUITY!by Darrin Colbourne

Star Trek(TM) Created by Gene Roddenberry, who I assume will be striking down from his satellite in heaven to smite me annnny minute now...

0856 HOURSFEDERATION STARSHIP REGENTEN ROUTE TO JIYJOSIGMA VI

She watched the screen on her computer with rapt attention. The woman she was viewing wasn't really saying anything she hadn't said many times before, but Lori didn't care. She always allowed herself to get lost in the speaker's beauty and charisma, as well as her words. The speaker had fair skin, dark hair, bright blue eyes and a high-pitched, trained voice, all of which she used to great effect as she spoke of her people's history and the way things ought to be. Lori had been sitting and watching the pre-recorded message for about a half an hour now, patiently but attentively, knowing what to expect but not sure when in the message it would come.

Finally, the speaker paused, sat back in her chair and smiled prettily. "Thank you for listening," she said, "and thank you so much for lending a hand to this noble cause." Another pause, then: "Climb Mount Niitaka."

Lori blinked as the screen reverted to the Federation emblem. So, at the end of the message. Not very secretive, but she supposed the time for secrets was over.

There was a small hand phaser sitting on the desk next to the computer. Lori stood and picked up the weapon, checked the setting, then fastened it to the waistband of her slacks, concealing it with her tunic.

With that done, Captain Lori Singer, commander of the Sovereign-class starship Regent, left her ready room and entered the Bridge. It was quiet, calm. Everyone was doing his or her job with cool efficiency. No one had questioned the need for their detour to this world two days prior. The detour had been ordered by Captain Singer, and her crew trusted her implicitly.

Commander T'Arzan, Regent's Vulcan First Officer, stood up from the center seat as Lori approached. "At our current speed, we will reach the Jiyjosigma System in fifteen-point-seven minutes," she reported. "Long-range scans of the sixth planet confirm the information in our database. Class M, average temperature between 40 and 60 degrees, oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere, green and fertile. No sentient life, though there is a complex and diverse ecosystem. It is interesting that the world has never been colonized, even though there is no record of it being claimed by another power or being designated a nature preserve world."

"Hmm, odd," was all the Captain would say. She continued to stare at the main viewer, watching intently as the stars streaked by at Warp. T'Arzan regarded her for a moment, and was about to comment further when Lori called out: "Computer! Execute program 'Singer Alpha!' Authorization: Singer L., code Bravo One, One-three, three Echo!"

The computer responded with a short series of beeps. This time the incongruity made T'Arzan's eyebrow go up. "Captain," she began, "may I ask..."

A sudden, persistent, shrill beeping sounded from the Operations console. The ops officer called out, "Captain! Something's wrong with the life-support system! Anesthezine gas is being released on every level of the ship except this one!" Lori didn't respond, but the ops officer, a Trill, was too busy to notice. "I can't stop it," he said, pounding his control panel in frustration. "I'm locked out!"

T'Arzan turned fully to Lori and confronted her. "Captain! The entire crew will be rendered unconscious in seconds! We must act!" When Lori continued to stand there impassively, T'Arzan said in a low tone, "That was the program you just activated. Why?"

Lori gave her a sideways look, then shrugged and said, "Because I didn't have enough people with me to take care of the whole ship like this." And with that she quick-drew her phaser, pressed it into T'Arzan's gut and fired. T'Arzan's eyes went wide before she staggered back and fell to the deck. Lori swung the weapon and stunned the ops officer as well, as the three other humans on the bridge stunned the rest of the bridge crew.

When they were done, Lori went over to the Ops console and pushed the ops officer to the deck. She reconfigured
the controls so that she could operate the transporter system. Setting it for site-to-site transport, she began transporting all the stunned and anesthetized non-humans aboard into a nearly-empty cargo bay, starting with T'Arzan.

__________________________________________________

There were exactly one hundred and thirty-three humans in the Regent's crew, including Dr. Bella, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, who was now reviving the last anesthetized human. Of that number, twenty-five were now carrying phasers and standing with the four from the Bridge, which included Captain Singer. All of them were gathered in Crew's Mess B. Singer waited until the doctor was finished before calling everyone to attention.

"I'm sorry you all had to go through that," she said, "but it was the only way that all the non-humans in the crew could be incapacitated at once."

"And why would anyone want to incapacitate every non-human at once," the Deputy CMO said, "or at all?"

Lori regarded her, then smiled. "Because they can't take part in the glorious mission that I've decided the Regent and we, her Human crew, will take on." She then explained in detail, trying to describe the task the same way she had heard it described so many times before by the woman she'd listened to earlier. She wasn't as articulate, a fact confirmed for her by the reaction of several of the people in the mess.

"You're insane!" Dr. Bella hissed. "What you're planning is impossible! And even if you could pull it off, it goes against everything we've ever been taught as citizens of the Federation!"

"I never assumed everyone here would agree," Lori said. "In fact, right now any one of you can refuse to participate. We'll understand."

"In that case, I refuse!" Dr. Bella said. "And I demand that you relieve yourself of command and report to Sick Bay for an examination!"

"I see," Lori said, "and who would command the ship?"

"Commander T'Arzan, of course!"

"Ah...I'm afraid T'Arzan is...unavailable."

"What? Where is she? For that matter, where are all the non-humans?"

"You'll be seeing them momentarily. When you do, would you give T'Arzan a message for me?" She recited the message, then someone else stunned Dr. Bella.

With Dr. Bella on the deck, Lori looked out over the crowd again. "Anyone else care to refuse?"

_________________________________________________

Dr. Bella awoke with the sun in her eyes. As she squinted in the bright daylight, she heard several voices, then felt arms helping her to her feet. "Where am I?"

"The surface of Jiyjosigma VI," someone said. It was T'Arzan. "You were beamed down unconscious with two others."

"I refused to help Captain Singer," Dr. Bella murmured. "They must have, too." When she could stand on her own, she automatically tried to tap her comm badge. It was gone. "Does anyone else have a communicator?"

T'Arzan shook her head. "They were taken from all of us."

Bella looked around, huffed, then looked T'Arzan in the eye. "She gave me a message for you. She said you'd understand."

"What is the message?"

Bella cleared her throat. "'Now there's a colony on the sixth planet. Make of it what you can.'"

T'Arzan's eyebrow went up again. "Indeed," she said, then she looked up, prompting everyone around her to do the same.

Okay, I know you hate the T' . . . Vulcan names, but I just spewed coffee all over my keyboard!

T'Arzan? Priceless.

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What? It's a perfectly normal Vulcan female name that I have to include in all of my fanfiction here, right? Or else I'm out of the club, right? It's just like the names of her sisters, who (spoiler) we'll meet sometime later.

Now, moving past that - What the hell just happened?

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It's not what just happened. It's why it just happened. Let's just say I'm acting on a few of my rants this time 'round.

Twelve ships had gathered in the outer reaches of the Coalsack. Regent had been the last to arrive, but compensated by being the largest and most powerful. Next were two Intrepid-classes and an Ambassador-class. The rest were smaller ships, Novas, Defiants, even an Albacore-class cutter. All had recently been commandeered by the humans in their crews. Lori Singer was the highest ranked, and the only captain to go along with her ship.

The gathering had only been waiting twelve hours before she arrived, piloting an old-looking runabout. She opened a channel to each ship and asked everyone to meet aboard the Regent. She docked her ship in one of the Sovereign-class's bays as the rest of the humans beamed over.

Lori went to meet her. Her heart was racing at the prospect. She was amazed, given the events that were going to take place, that it felt more like meeting a pen pal or a blind date for the first time than meeting a great leader. That's how close Lori felt to her.

She stood at the landing bay door and composed herself for a moment before stepping forward. The door opened wiith the sound of hydraulics. The woman had already disembarked.

"April..." Lori breathed.

April smiled that beautiful smile. She was as tall as Lori had imagined, and she was wearing a plain black bodysuit that highlighted a stunning figure. Lori immediately felt inadequate, herself barely more than five feet tall, plain-faced and a little plump. Yet April smiled at her anyway as they approached each other.

"Then we're going to do great things together," April said. "I want us all to change the face of the galaxy, and we'll begin our efforts right away. Where is everyone?"

"On the holodeck. It was the only place big enough without using a cargo or landing bay."

"Then let's go."

Lori nodded and led off. As they walked the halls of the ship, April played tourist and commented, "I'm really glad you're one of us, Lori. You brought a Sovereign with you."

Lori blushed, and felt stupid for doing it, so she didn't turn to look at April when she responded. "I've only done what I could for the cause."

"No argument," April said. "This ship is exactly what we need. You are exactly what we need, Lori."

Lori blushed harder.

They continued in slience until they reached the holodeck entrance. "We programmed a Roman forum," Lori said. "Everyone will be seated around the speaker's floor. I'll lead you onto it. You should be prepared."

April smiled and nodded. Lori opened the entrance and they walked in.

Cheers erupted from the benches surrounding the marble floor of the forum. April grinned and waved at the people she had persuaded-and the ones those people had persuaded-to come together to remake the known universe. She let the ovation go on for about a minute, then signalled for everyone to settle down. When they were still and had their attention, she spoke:

"I see there's a little over five hundred of us here. There was a time when twelve starships could gather in one spot and there would be more than four hundred humans per ship. Today, it took twelve, including one of the largest ships ever built, just to bring us together. I find that distressing. Don't you?" Everyone else nodded. "I'd like to change that. You know I do. I've spoken to many of you personally and you all know I have a plan. Now I can share it with you and we can put it into action. I want to start by making this ship our base. That will allow us to use the others as remote weapons. Next, I want Lori to retain command of the fine ship she's brought us. That will make her my second-in-command. Any objections?"

Smiles and a chorus of "No" and "No Objections" greeted Lori as she blushed harder.

"We'll decide who else does what over the next few days," April said, "and once our crew is formed, our real work can begin." She balled her right hand into a fist and put it over her heart. "For our home."

The others repeated the gesture with great feeling. "For our home," they echoed.

Oh, there'll be lots of seriousness eventually. I'm just treating it like an episode of NCIS: an often comic take on very serious subject matter. For the show it's murder. For this story...well, you'll find out soon.

If this is based on your rants you are so well-known for around here I guess I better brace myself.

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No, you're fine. Part of the reason I jumped into this was because I came to the realization the other day that I waste entirely too much time and too much of my peace of mind trying to get you people to write stuff differently. I don't have anywhere near as much fun as I did starting out. So this is me having fun. Feel free to ignore the ranty parts.

It's a fun anti-alien story so far and I'm interested to see where this is going to lead.

Established in the early days of the Federation, Approach Control for Sector 001 was created to manage the increasing traffic into the Solar System from deep space. Built on the surface of Pluto, along with several large sensor arrays, the minor planet's unique orbit offered the station a view of space that started at a sphere a light-year wide and had steadily increased as sensing and processing technology had advanced. Now the station could track objects almost as far away as the outer edge of Alpha Centauri.

That was where the latest incoming problem was detected. A ship with a Federation-style warp signature had been detected inbound at over warp 7.5 and showing no sign of slowing down. Controllers in Approach Control's dark, functional watch facility had been trying to contact the vessel since its detection, with no response. There were no long-range vessels available in-system to intercept it, so the controllers watched and continued to hail until it was practically knocking on Pluto's door.

Then someone got lucky. Starfleet Ensign Theo McGarry had taken over observation of the inbound with his supervisor, A Bolian commander named Krill, looking over his shoulder. "Unidentified vessel," McGarry hailed, "This is Sector Approach Control. How do you read?"

After so long a silence, the scratchy, staticky response was most welcome. "Approach Control, this is the Federation Starship Barb," A woman's voice said. "We read you broken and faintly, over."

"They'll hit the wall before they reach Earth," Krill said. So close to a gravitational body as massive as the sun, there was a limit to the size of the warp field a ship could maintain. A field big enough to drive a ship past warp seven wouldn't survive long in the inner system. "They'll get slowed to warp one, but it'll be hard on 'em."

"That's only marginally good news," McGarry said.

Krill grunted in agreement, then someone else reported, "Valkyries are on the way!"

Krill went to talk to the Starfleet patrol craft while McGarry went back to his comms. "Barb, we expect you to lose your warp field when you reach the inner system. Are you ready for that, over?"

"We're ready, Control," the voice said.

"When that happens, a pair of Valkyries will meet you and provide escort. They'll look out for you in case anything happens."

"That's good to hear, control."

Now McGarry thought. There were a few ways to deal with this problem, but while they would protect Earth, they weren't all that good for the crew of the Barb. The simplest solution would be a force field, which would protect Earth by destroying the cutter. Tractor beams might do less damage, but with no other big ships around there weren't any available. No one wanted to have the ship destroyed outright with weapons, but if it came to that...well, that was another reason for the Valkyries.

_____________________________________________________________

Barb hit the wall minutes later as it crossed the orbit of Mars and entered the plane. The Valkyries caught up then and fell into formation with the ship. The lead pilot made contact immediately, while the other pilot initiated a scan.

"What the hell?" He muttered, then called the other pilot. "There's no one aboard!"

_____________________________________________________________

Barb's computer - meticulously programmed by April's engineers before being sent to the system - had been monitoring all communications pertaining to its ship ever since contact had been established. Now that it knew its cover had been blown, it began evasive maneuvers for the last leg of its journey.

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"She's maneuvering!" McGarry exclaimed. "Did they get their controls back?"

"There's no one aboard!" Krill said. "It's being controlled by the computer! The thing's trying to evade the Valkyries!" He returned to talk to the fighters. "Shoot it down!"

_________________________________________________

Now the Valkyries were attacking. Barb raised its shields and executed its terminal maneuver. Now its destination was clear.

_________________________________________________________________

"Thank goodness," McGarry said. "It's going for the dark side of the moon."

Krill looked at him like he was crazy, then looked at the track of the Barb in horror. "What the hell do you mean, 'thank goodness'?!"

A strange but seriously entertaining tale here, Admiral2. A ship on a suicide run to the dark side of the moon. Who knows what might happen? It could crash into a nuclear waste storage site, setting off a chain-reaction that could hurl the moon out of its orbit and into deep space!

Er, or not.

Still waiting on the Bourne guy to show up, but I'll be patient. For now.

Mmh, I wonder what would happen to the Moon colony (which I suspect is on the other side of the Moon) if a star ship crashes on the moon. I mean, there'll be quite a big matter-antimatter explosion, right?

It's named after an american submarine...y'know, like Albacore, Scamp, Bluefin...ya seeing my point here?

A strange but seriously entertaining tale here, Admiral2. A ship on a suicide run to the dark side of the moon. Who knows what might happen? It could crash into a nuclear waste storage site, setting off a chain-reaction that could hurl the moon out of its orbit and into deep space!

Er, or not.

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Not this time, but April's got more ships so... [shrug]

Still waiting on the Bourne guy to show up, but I'll be patient. For now.

Reinforcements for the Valkyries pursuing Barb scrambled from bases on Earth. They would be too late. Knowing this, the pursuers ramped up their attack. They made some headway, but the cutter's shields were still holding. What the pilots didn't know - but suspected - was that without a crew aboard and without its own weapons, Barb's computer could devote every erg of power to the shields and maintaining a warp field.

"Pull up!" The lead pilot finally called. The ships were seconds away from impact. The Valkyries peeled off in different directions and gunned their engines.

The Barb slammed into the Moon travelling at every kilometer per second of the speed of light. On impact, her shields and warp field collapsed at the same instant, crushing the hull of the ship around the warp core, which breached. The resulting explosion tripled the size of the crater formed by the initial impact and threw tons of moondust into space. All this happened within the first second.

The Moon was rattled in its orbit. Quakes radiated out from the impact zone and converged on the settlements in the opposite hemisphere. Residents of the satellite were devastated by sudden, violent tremors that shook buildings off their foundations and cracked atmosphere-bearing pressure domes. Civil Defense and Rescue agencies, having only gotten a warning a few seconds after Barb's course change, were hard-pressed to gear up while the tremors persisted with no let-up in sight.

On Earth, tides rose sharply in areas over which the Moon currently traveled, flooding coastal cities and small islands. Rescue agencies here, prepared for an impact somewhere on Earth, were instead faced with the need to keep people across the hemisphere from being drowned in their beds. Calls went out immediately to any and all available starships for support, but the only one already in the sector was the starship Sundown, a Nova-class currently in spacedock for upgrades. The commander and crew were recalled from shore leave immediately, though several of the crewmembers had been in the areas affected when the Moon was hit.

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The immediate aftereffects of Barb's impact lasted more than four hours, while after shocks on the moon would continue throughout the next day. The people at Sector Approach Control monitored it all, helpless to do anything else. "By the prophets," a Bajoran officer said. Theo McGarry was speechless, trying desperately to figure out if there was anything else he might have done. It was cold comfort to realize that the entire event had been planned so there would be nothing he could have done.

Commander Krill was about to try and comfort McGarry again, when someone else got his attention. "Commander, the Barb transmitted a message through subspace just before impact. It looks like a recording."

"Play it," Krill said. He turned his attention to the master display taking up a wall of the room. In a moment, the chart of the Solar System and the tracks of inbound ships displayed there were replaced by the image of a dark-haired, blue-eyed woman who appeared to be sitting in a starship's ready room.

"Citizens of the Federation," she began, "You may call me April, and what you have just witnessed is a demonstration of my power..."

Ms. April is one cold b***h. I have to wonder, though - if she's so pro-human/anti-alien why attack the moon circling the human homeworld? Why not attack Vulcan or some other "alien" planet? Must be more to her agenda than you've revealed so far.

A devastating attack, indeed. Nice job of describing the effects. I wonder how many lives were lost as a result?

Just hope Bourne wasn't hanging out on the beach - if he was, it may be a long while before he shows up.